Coffee#1 /

Coffee first arrived on British shores in 1637, brought back by travellers of the Middle East.

It’s taken a good while for coffee to infiltrate Britain. The famed nation of tea drinkers – brought up on a diet of Miss Marple and the Mad Hatter – took some time to be sufficiently convinced of the merits of the drink, to give up their milky builders brew and a custard cream in exchange for an espresso and biscotti.

For a long time, the only coffee that the British status quo was exposed to was the freeze-dried variety. We’d brew up a brown broth, following the same formula we used for our tea… brown stuff + boiling water + a dash of milk and maybe sugar.

However, coffee adverts depicting a sophisticated, exotic utopia finally penetrated the nation’s psyche. We started to wake up and smell the… well, coffee, entertaining the idea that there might be more to this Bovril-esque paste than initially met the taste bud.

Over the last decade, the evolution of the British coffee palate has gained real impetus. Briskly surpassing the era of the ‘froffy coffee’ (a uniquely British term for classifying the confusing array of emerging Italian specialties), our love, fascination, and in many cases, obsession with this mysteriously complex substance has blossomed.

Some say we’re still in the early stages of our relationship with the bean. But for many today, professionally crafted coffee is an integral part of everyday life. It’s almost impossible to walk down a British high street without the aroma of freshly roasted beans wafting from the doorways of the artisan coffee houses that are now part of our urban landscape.

Well we’ve come a long way folks, and I hope you’ve enjoyed the journey. What do you think will be the next chapter of Britain’s coffee love story…?